of intimacy unwarranted but unshakeable and overpowering feeling that emotional closeness will seriously damage or destroy us and that we must, therefore, protect
ourselves by remaining at an emotional distance from others and oedipal fixation a dysfunctional bond with a parent of the opposite sex that we don’t outgrow and that
doesn’t permit us to mature into adult relationships with others. There are two kinds of oedipal fixation. They are mother fixation and father fixation. In mother fixation,
“people are attracted only to women who resemble the mother, but because of this the shadow of the incest taboo makes the expression of sexual feelings towards them
difficult or impossible ” Barry, 2009:103, vice versa with father fixation. Because of
that, people “degrade their love objects”Barry, 2009:103 in order to make their love
objects available as sexual partners. 4.
Core issues will result on certain “self-destructive behaviours and may show up in the recurrence of disturbing dreams
” Bressler, 1999:86 The manifestation of core issue is a certain destructive behaviour such as
“choosing unhealthy friends or romantic partners, displaying inappropriate social behaviour for example, habitually dominating conversations or throwing temper
tantrums in response to disagreements, engaging in unwarranted violent behaviour, engaging in substance abuse, and the like. The recurrence of a disturbing dream might
also be a clue to the existence of an unconscious problem, as might a tendency to behave in defensive manner when certain topics come up in a conversation
” Bressler, 1999:83.
3. Female Sexuality
Infantile sexuality is “the notion that sexuality begins not at puberty, with physical maturing, but in infancy
, especially through the infant’s relationship with the mother
” Barry, 2009:93. There are three stages in infantile sexuality. They are oral, anal and phallic stage. In oral and anal stage, children “experience no distinction
between itself and the world ” Madsen, 2000:94. The phallic stage is when children
experience the distinction between itself and the world. In this stage, males and females will develop differently.
“We have long realized that in women the development of sexuality is complicated by the task of renouncing that genital zone
which was originally the principal one, namely, the clitoris, in a favor of new zone, the vagina
” Freud, 1928:1. Since woman has two sexual organs, “the sexual life of the woman is regularly
split up into two phases, the first of which is of a masculine character, whilst only the second is specifically feminine. Thus in female, there is a process of transition from
the one phase to the other, to which there is nothing analogues in ma les.” Freud,
1928:2. The first female sexual development occurs in their early stage when the centre of genital is clitoris. This stage is considered to be masculine, because clitoris
“is the analogues to the male organ” Freud, 1928:2. As the female in this stage is masculine, her love object is her own mother. Her mother is
“her first love’s object” Freud, 1928:1, similar to what happens in male
’s development. In this stage, both female and male experience love to their mother. In the second stage, female
“changes in sex, so must the sex of her love object change” Freud, 1928: 3. As the centre of female genital changes to her vagina, female experiences her second stage
of sexual development, the feminine stage . In this stage, female’s love object changes
from her mother to her father. “The original mother-object has to be exchanged for
the father” Freud, 1931:1 is one of the important stages in female development.
To pass the first stage of female sexual development, female need the figure of a father. The existence of a father with penis will make her realizes that she is castrated.
There are three possibilities when female realizes that she is castrated based on Freud in Female Sexuality. The first is she gives up her phallic age as she is
“dissatisfied with her clitoris” Freud, 1931:4. It will lead to a suspension of her whole sexual life.
It may also lead to “a masculine proclivity in other fields” Freud, 1931:4. The
second possibility is she “clings in obstinate self-assertion to her threatened masculinity” Freud, 1931:4 which leads to a homosexual relation. The last
possibility is the occurrence of “normal Oedipus Complex in its feminine form”
Freud, 1931:4. Oedipus complex is the attachment of children
“to the parent of the opposite sex, while their relation to the other parent is predominantly hostile
” Freud, 1931:1. Oedipus complex in its feminine form is when female has successfully changed her
love’s object from her mother to her father. To pass the normal sexual development, female shall experience Oedipus complex exchanges
her love’s object from her mother to her father.
However, there is “possibility that many women may remain arrested at the original mother-attachment and never properly achieve the change-
over to men”. Freud, 1931:1. These female are stuck in their pre-Oedipus stage as they never
properly change their love object to the opposite gender. It is supported by the fact that a girl “never completely loses her pre-Oedipal identification with her mother.”
Madsen, 2000:94. It places the “girl in a position of ambivalence where she belongs completely to neither the mother nor the father but still seeks to belong to the
powerful masculine culture ” Madsen, 2000:95. Since female’s love to her mother is
natural while her love to her father is build-up, woman cannot simply omit the repression of her love towards her mother. This, of course, reflects in her later
development. Although pre-
Oedipus analysis is elusive “as if it had undergone some specially inexorable repression, but pre-Oedipus stage in female is more important than we
have hitherto supposed ” Freud, 1931:1. It is supported by the fact that female’s
clitoris with its masculinity still continues to function in later female sexual life: There can be no doubt that the bisexual disposition which me maintain to be
characteristics of human beings manifests itself much more plainly in the female than in the male. The latter has only one principal sexual zone, only
one sexual organ, whereas the former has two: the vagina, the true female organ, and the clitoris, which is analogous to the male organ Freud, 1931:2
Freu d’s hypothesis about bisexual is also supported by Helen Cixous. She says “that
men and women are essentially bisexual but monosexuality heterosexuality is demanded of us as the part of the process of socialization” Madsen, 2000:97.
